Asylum Success Still Varies Widely Among Immigration Judges: TRAC

TRAC, Nov. 25, 2024

"Wide differences in Immigration Judge asylum denial rates are evident across many Courts in the latest release of TRAC’s Immigration Judge report series. These new reports update each judge’s asylum decisions over the past six years through September 2024. The series includes 823 individual judge reports covering each of the 66 current Immigration Courts.[1] Where these judges were based is shown in Figure 1. Each of the latest individual judge reports is available here. In this updated series, the widest difference between asylum denial rates was found in the San Francisco Immigration Court. See Figure 2.[2] There the range between the judge with the highest denial rate (91.6%) and the lowest denial rate (1.3%) was over 90 percentage points. The New York Immigration Court was right behind with a range of 89 percentage points, followed by the Arlington and Sacramento Immigration Courts each with a range of 86 percentage points. Two additional Immigration Courts had ranges of 80 percentage points or higher. These were the Newark Immigration Court (range of 83) and the Boston Immigration Court (range of 80). For other Courts, see Denial Rates table. ..."